Abstract:

The purpose of the study is to present a decision-making approach towards helping store plant location evaluation and selection. Plant location selection, one of the most important decisions made businesses, effects success of businesses. Both needs of stores and customers should be considered while making decision of store plant location. Yet, these types of decisions usually have strong and complex nature. It is considered many factors to determine suitable store plant location such as transportation, parking and distance from competitors. In study, linguistic variables were used to assess the importance weights and ratings for these factors and converted to positive trapezoidal fuzzy numbers. Then, store plant location problem solved using fuzzy TOPSIS method. Fuzzy TOPSIS method is one of the Fuzzy Multiple Criteria Decision Making (FMCDM) methods and helps group decision-making in fuzzy environments. According to fuzzy TOPSIS method, a closeness coefficient is evaluated to determine the ranking order of store plant locations. The closeness coefficient is calculated by the distances from Fuzzy Positive Ideal Solution (FPIS) and Fuzzy Negative Ideal Solution (FNIS). End of the study, the method was explained step by step with an example. The study showed that fuzzy TOPSIS method could be used in store plant location evaluation and selection as a decision-making tool.

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